Building The Future | Benjamin Anderson

About this episode

Benjamin Anderson, a former business partner of Vance Crowe and now the founder of a biomedical company working on bioelectricity, returns to the podcast to discuss his real estate work rehabilitating a rough North St. Louis neighborhood and his research applying ultrasound and electromagnetic fields to cell behavior. The conversation moves from neighborhood security cameras and the tradeoffs of surveillance to the FDA's role in blocking wellness devices and pediatric health monitors, then turns philosophical as the two weigh whether curing aging is actually desirable once questions of memory, purpose, and readiness for death enter the picture. Vance grounds the science in his own experience, referencing his mentor Pete's death at 105 and his own cancer treatment. The episode closes on Bitcoin, with both agreeing that price swings do not shake their long-term conviction.

“I want that price to be as low as possible, so I get more Bitcoin as the price appreciates it has no bearing on my mood. I look at it and I think like, okay, it means nothing to me. But there are a lot of people, in fact, more than 50% of holders now are underwater, so there are probably a lot of people that are hurting.”

“He was, he told me in a don't cry for me. I don't want you to be sad. I am, I have lived my life and I'm done. Is taking away is, is curing aging necessarily good?”

“The, the, the benefit of new youth and new things coming on. Like, like can the human civilization model will have to change so dramatically if we get rid of aging that what it is to be human itself will change.”

Key moments

• Benjamin describes buying a $10,000 house in North St. Louis and the years-long process of turning the block around with rentals, lighting, and cameras.
• Vance and Benjamin debate whether tearing down vacant buildings or planting trees does more to revive a neighborhood, framed around creative constraint.
• Benjamin recounts a neighborhood security camera getting shot with a shotgun a week after installation, and the decision to replace it immediately rather than concede the block.
• Vance describes deliberately raising unanswerable procedural questions to kill a neighborhood camera proposal he did not want approved (institutions).
• Benjamin explains his company's bet on physics over chemistry, using ultrasound and electromagnetic fields to change cell behavior through bioelectricity research inspired by Michael Levin.
• Vance connects the science to his own cancer treatment, asking how field-based approaches differ from the gold-marker radiation therapy he underwent.
• Benjamin traces the MRI back to Raymond Damadian's research on the bioelectric properties of cancerous kidney tissue in St. Louis decades ago (legacy).
• Vance and Benjamin debate whether curing aging is good, with Vance recalling his 105-year-old mentor Pete telling him he was ready to die (legacy).
• Vance criticizes FDA-driven liability culture in medicine, including a story about a pediatric pulse oximeter being remotely disabled during his child's RSV scare (institutions).

Notable quotes

“I want that price to be as low as possible, so I get more Bitcoin as the price appreciates it has no bearing on my mood.”

“I mean every system that is established moves into moves from growth stage.”

“I had the chance to see my mentor at 105 years old and sit with him in the last weeks of his life.”

“For kids there are a thing called an outlet and you can attach basically a fitness tracker to their foot.”

Predictions made in this episode

• Home data storage (camera footage, medical records, tax records) will move off the cloud and onto privately owned home servers, treated like a household appliance.